Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc by David Elliott

Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc tells the story of this famous girl-warrior saint who ultimately saved France from English occupation in the 15th century.

Told in verse from multiple perspectives, the novel opens with Joan about to be burned at the stake.
In the very first poem, Joan sets the stage.
"...My name is
Joan, but I am called the Maid. My
hands are bound behind me. The fire
beneath me laid."

As she awaits her fate at the stake, Joan thinks back on all the events that have led her to this moment.
"Every life is its own story--
not without a share of glory,
and  not without a share of grief.
I lived like a hero at seventeen.
At nineteen, I die like a thief."

Born in Lorraine in the Duchy of Bar, Joan lives in Domremy with her sister, two brothers, her parents and uncles and aunt.  Her parents, who are peasants work the land for a living and work hard. Her mother Isabelle in a poem of the same title states that she did her duty teaching Joan to churn, bake, plant and spin and that Joan did these all better than any girl in the village. Yet, Joan seemed unsettled.
"...Yet her mind
was elsewhere, settled on another need,
a need she could not share with her mother
or any other woman."
Although Joan tried her best to do what was asked of her, she was "possessed by a ruthless and persistent urge...".

At this time France was involved in a bitter civil war, Queen Isabeau had signed a treaty with the city of Troyes and betrayed her own son. King Henry, King of England  would now be King of France and not Charles VII. Joan considers Charles her king and not Henry. Henry had captured Paris and laid seige to Orleans. The dauphin fled south to Loire and established his court in Loire. While Joan's brothers went to war, she sat at home in her homespun red dress and sewed.

Then one morning, Joan's world changed drastically. While thinning seedlings, at age thirteen, she experiences a vision of St. Michael the Archangel telling her to be good. After this the archangel frequently appears along with St. Margaret and St. Catherine.  For the next three years Joan faithfully did her chores at home, but she knew that she had to leave
"Domremy for the nearby town
 Vaucouleurs, where Robert de 
Baudricourt, my voices said, would
get me to Chinon and the unanointed
king. I left my family, my
friends, everything I had loved or
known. ..."  
Joan's mission to turn the tide in the Hundred Years war and begin to drive the English from France had begun. As she thinks back on her part in the war, the fire at the stake begins to rise and consume her.

Discussion

Voices is an imaginative and sometimes odd retelling of the story of St. Joan of Arc. Elliot, an award-winning author, uses metered and rhyming verse to express the voices of several people central to the story including Joan, her father Jacques d'Arc, her mother Isabelle,St. Michael, Robert De Baudricourt, Saint Catherine, Charles VII, Saint Margaret, and Bishop Pierre Cauchon.

As with Allan Wolf's The Watch That Ends The Night, a novel that tells the Titanic sinking in verse using the voices of inanimate objects, Elliott too includes the "voices" of inanimate objects as well as other unusual things. For example there are poems from Joan's sewing needle, the candle, the fairy tree of her childhood, alms, her father's cattle, her sword, Joan's red dress, the tunic she replaced it with,  Joan's hair, her armor, her warhorse and the fire that consumes her at the end. Other poems are by Silence, Virginity, The Road to Vaucouleurs, Lust, the Altar at Sainte Catherine de Fierbois, the Castle at Chinon, the sword at Fierbois, and so forth.

Elliott runs amok with the number of voices he includes, each "voice" telling its part in Joan's story. Joan's armor insists it did its "...very best to shield her from the pain of injury..." while the crossbow boasts "...I struck and laid her flat. She could not walk. She could not ride. I made sure of that." and later on "I am a master at my art". The sword at Fierbois wonders how Joan knew where it lay. In this well crafted poem the sword tells its past. "I've had my fill of human strife; I've had my taste of human blood. No more the bow, the lance, the knife....Who told the girl I rested here? How could she have known?" The stake opines that it is Joan's "...best and only friend, her stalwart intimate. On me she's learned she can depend."

Elliott decided to write his poems in forms such as villanelles and sestinas that were popular during Joan's lifetime. He also included forms that were developed a bit later. Some of the poems are calligrams, or shape poems, including "The Sword At Fierbois", "The Stake" and "The Crossbow". Elliott explains these poems at the back of the novel. Many of the poems are delightful in their rhyming and expressiveness. Others, particularly those of the saints are bizarre. Both Saint Michael and Saint Catherine question the belief of people in them, while Saint Margaret urges Joan to put her faith in the constancy of fire.  Nevertheless, Elliott manages to convey Joan's story to his readers and capture the girl soldier-saint's determination, urgency and courage to carry out the will of God for her king and country.

Interspersed with Elliot's poetry are quotes taken from Joan's Trial of Condemnation which resulted in her being burned at the stake as a heretic and the Trial of Nullification that occurred some twenty-four years after her martyrdom which absolved her. She was eventually canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

Elliott does offer his readers a lovely map of France as it existed during Joan's lifetime, but no historical background to his novel. The conflict Joan fought in came to be called the Hundred Years War.  This war began in 1337 when King Edward III of England fought King Philip VI over land in France. The land had been claimed by English kings who ruled after the French William the Conqueror's reign in England. The English were at first successful but with the Black Death raging in England and a series of defeats, their luck changed. However, in 1413, the tide had turned in favour of the English who were now ruled by Henry V. He won the Battle of Agincourt as well as other battles and with the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, his heirs were to be the successors to the French crown. Henry V married Catherine of Valois, the daughter of the French king. He also established a military alliance with Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, controlling much of northern France. With Henry's untimely death, his son Henry VI continued to fight for control of the north of France.

Joan of Arc was born in 1412, in Domremy a village that lay within the lands controlled by the Burgundians. However, the people of Domremy were faithful to the king of France. Joan was described later as a pious child who spent some time in prayer in church. When she was thirteen, in 1425, she began to experience what she later called her "voices". Joan was also able to discern in some way that they were St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret. These saints gradually made her aware of God's mission for her, to help the king of France. She was to go to Robert Baudricourt in Vaucouleurs. This Joan did in 1428 and again in 1429. Her prediction of the English defeat in the Battle of the Herrings convinced a skeptical Baudricourt, and Joan was sent to meet the king in the town of Chinon. To protect herself, Joan wore men's clothing.

Despite the king disguising himself, Joan immediately recognized him and after an intensive examination by court theologians and bishops at Poitiers, was approved to be involved in France's army. At Chinon, Joan refused the sword made for her, instead instructing that a search be made for an ancient sword, which she stated would be found buried beneath the alter of Ste. Catherine de Fierbois. According to a historical document,a letter by Sire de Rotslaer which was written on April 22, 1429, and which has been preserved, Joan predicted that she would raise the siege of Orleans, that in the battle for Orleans she would be wounded and that the king would be crowned at Reims.

All this came to pass: on May 8th the siege was raised, Joan was wounded in the breast by an arrow, and King Charles was crowned on July 17, 1429. With her mission now complete Joan wished to return home but was kept in the army against her will. Joan was wounded again in a failed assault on Paris, where she was shot in the thigh. In an attack on Compiegne, Joan was captured by the Burgundian forces that were attacking the town and held by John of Luxembourg who sold her to the English.

Joan was left to her fate by an ungrateful and apathetic King Charles VII. The English, also Catholic at this time, were as the Catholic Encyclopedia expresses so well, " feared their prisoner with a superstitious terror, partly because they were ashamed of the dread which she inspired, were determined at all costs to take her life. They could not put her to death for having beaten them, but they could get her sentenced as a witch and a heretic." And this too came to pass. Denied legal counsel and held in the secular prison - the Castle of Rouen where she was molested when dressed in women's clothing, Joan confounded her interrogators - theologians from the University of Paris. She was convicted of being a heretic for dressing as a man and for her "voices". Joan did recant once but her voices returned to chastise her, that this was displeasing to God and encouraging her to remain faithful. This was all Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais needed.  Joan was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, her ashes dumped into the Seine River.

Joan had prophesied during her trial that within seven years the English would lose a bigger prize than Orleans. In 1437, Henry VI was defeated at Paris. The French eventually reclaimed their country from the English who had to deal with civil war which came to be known as the War of the Roses.

Overall, Elliott's Voices is a good starting point for those interested in this popular French saint and her unconventional life. The beautiful cover is also sure to attract teen readers.

Book Details:

Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc by David Elliot
New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company     2019
194 pp.